“In this sport, injuries are going to be a part of the game, it is a contact sport. Whether you lose a guy to an injury or whatever the reason is, the amount of games we have left our options are to get the guys prepared and ready to play that we have available. That has been the approach and that hasn’t change much. It’s a matter of spending our time and our energy on trying to get the guys ready to play that we have available; that’s something that we’re very well versed at and that we will continue to do the things that move us forward.”

On left tackle Moise Larose:

“Well, obviously for us to recruit him, he meets what we’re looking for from a skill set standpoint. He’s a guy that played as a freshman even prior to these injuries; he’s a guy that we’ve held in high regard in terms of his ability. I think he’ll do well, he’s shown the ability thus far in practice to pick up things. He’s the guy that we decided to bring along as the season went on and was able to take some meaningful reps earlier in the year for us and we’ll support him and do things to protect him as much as we can as well.”

On maintaining continuity with Moise Larose at left tackle:

“That’s something we’ve discussed from a personnel standpoint all the time and it’s probably Randy [Edsall]’s biggest strong point. He has pretty good gauge and temperature on the personnel moves and decisions that are made. Obviously, him being the head coach, those decisions come through him and he takes our opinions on things, but I think he spends time studying our roster, knowing and anticipating having to do certain things. For us, the continuity is always great to have, but we’ve always done things to prepare for worse case scenarios and that’s just how Randy sets up our practice schedule and that’s how he sets our reps. As I said before, it starts with him in terms of our ability to move past whatever adversity we face as a team. The next man up mentality is something that we have embraced.”

On Moise Larose’s preparation this season:

“He was part of our second team and the way our schedule sets up our second team guys get about 40 percent of the reps. The way our schedule sets up in practice, the one’s take about 60 percent of the reps and the two’s get about 40 percent and he’s been a two since the start of the season. So it’s not like taking a guy like Shawn Petty, who was play linebacker/outside linebacker and moving him to quarterback where there weren’t any reps whatsoever. So he has been involved in the game planning for the past eight or nine weeks, so there’s some retention there. For us, it wasn’t as much as a big deal as some may think because he’s been taking those reps in practice, maybe not a lot of game reps, but enough in practice if he was needed he’d be able to step in.”

On running back Brandon Ross’ status for Saturday:

“He’s been practicing. We talk personnel on Thursday, so we’ll see how he does today and tomorrow and have a feel for him.”

On the status of quarterback C.J. Brown:

“Same thing, he’s been practicing. He’s been doing well. He looks as healthy as I’ve seen him. I don’t see any difference in him. I know prior to a couple weeks ago when he was a little banged up, but he’s practiced well and he’s the guy and we’re moving forward, getting him ready to go have a good game on Saturday.”

On Syracuse’s defense:

“The big thing with them on defense is that they’re a pressure team. We’ve watched six, seven game breakdowns of them and 60, 70 percent of their snaps have some form of pressure whether it’s zone or man. They want to be a pressure team. They want to get after you, create confusion and bring blitzers from different places. Luckily, for us we face that in practice and faced that in quite a few weeks. We’ve had some work at it, but obviously we haven’t executed it the way we need to execute to get W’s like we want.

“They are a hard-nose tough team and we know we’re going to get their best when they come in here on Saturday and for us it always starts with going back to taking care of the things that we can control on offense. I thought we did some decent things in our last game, but we didn’t do enough of them. One of the things that jumps out at me on offense is the ability to sustain drives; we’re either a big play or bust in my opinion. When you want to win games and beat good teams you have got to be consistent and not just rely on big plays and that’s something we’ve talked about. Some things that we’ve tried to lock in and focus on during our bye weeks is getting back to being fundamentally and technically sound so that we can execute the assignments.”

Defensive Coordinator Brian Stewart

On getting some players back from injury this week:

“We’re just practicing and seeing how everyone is going to fit in to what we’re going to do this week. You let everybody go through the week and see how they look and then on Thursday we sit down and as a staff we sit down and talk about how everyone has progressed through the week.”

On the status of defensive back Jeremiah Johnson:

“He’s pushing through. I think that he’s a kid that really wants to be out there, but we have just let the injury take its course, and when it’s time he’ll be out there. But he’s doing a good job keeping he’s spirit up.”

On moving defensive lineman Andre Monroe to defensive end:

“I just think as we progressed through the week and looking at things during the bye week, we are just still trying to move people and parts around that put the best product on the field.”

On defensive lineman Zeke Riser:

We’re doing what Zeke knows. The thing about Zeke being here is helping the guys understand the language we speak, that’s where I think he helps the most. It’s hard when you get to a new place and you’re injured and you’re trying to watch, but you’re trying to get rehab, all those things take a toll on you and then you have to catch up. I think he’s had an opportunity to catch up.”

On the game against Clemson:

“The truth of the matter is, there’s no such thing as moral victories. You go into every game and you want to have energy and have a stop them whenever you can every time you can attitude, and we just have to come out of this bye week with the fined tuned things that we talked about; being good on third down, stopping people from scoring in the red-zone and win sudden change.”

On the vibe amongst the unit after a sudden possession change:

“I took this from coach Wade Phillips, as soon as there is sudden change, coach [Greg] Gattuso and I get them together before they run on the field, we assess the situation, I tell them what we expect them to do whatever the case may be, tell them what defense we’re going to be in and send them on the field so that it’s a common force and not just them running on the field from all over the place.”

On Syracuse’s offense:

“I think they have a very athletic quarterback. Not that we haven’t seen any athletic quarterbacks, every game presents its own challenges. They’re a good run team, I think their center does a good job in communicating the run blocking as well as the protection, and the quarterback gets the ball out of his hands and if he can’t, he runs.”

With its season opener against Florida International 11 days away, the Maryland football team held its final open practice on Tuesday afternoon at the on-campus practice facility.

Preseason camp is set to break Thursday after morning meetings with the players moving into their permanent residences that afternoon. The Terps will hold a walk-thru Wednesday morning with a full practice later in the day.

Head coach Randy Edsall addressed the media following practice on Tuesday and touched on several topics including the status of the offensive line heading into the season opener.

“Once we get into game week and we have to put out a two-deep we will,” said Edsall about the starting five. “But we looked like we’ve got some guys who can settle in there. We had Mike Madaras at left [tackle], De’Onte Arnett at left guard, Sal [Conaboy] at center, Mike Dunn at right guard and Ryan Doyle at right tackle. That’s pretty much how I think that will be; we just hope not to get any injuries.”

A popular topic amongst the media for the past two weeks has been the competition for the No. 2 quarterback spot. Edsall hinted this competition could extend into the start of the season.

“Right now, we’re in a situation where it’s still an “or” situation,” Edsall said. “Nobody really separated themselves. It’s really Caleb [Rowe] and Ricardo [Young]. Perry’s [Hills] probably down. I think Perry’s still coming back a little bit from that knee injury. That’s where we are, but anything can change. I’m waiting for somebody to step up. If not, we’ll just make a week-to-week decision or situation-to-situation decision.”

Edsall touched on the development of wide receiver Stefon Diggs as a leader at media day to begin camp and believes the wideout is embracing the role so far in camp.

“I think he’s really stepping up more as a leader,” said Edsall. “That’s the one thing I challenged him with is that he needs to be more of a leader, not only by example, but also being vocal. I think he understand what his role is and what he needs to do. He is stepping up and doing it, and he’s getting better at it each and every day. It’s good to see that development take place.”

Davis Earns the Nod at Safety: Edsall said sophomore Sean Davis has earned the starting job at one of the safety positions. But junior A.J. Hendy remains very much in the mix particularly on special teams and in the Terps’ dime package.

“Right now, we have Sean with the No. 1’s, but that one was as close as you can probably get. That’s what we told the kids. It was close. Sean knows that he’s got to perform each day. A.J. has practiced very hard, he has before too.

“As I told A.J., you’re a starter on this football team. He’s starting for us on dime and special teams. We had to get these guys to understand how important special teams are because I think we’ve got enough talent to be pretty special on special teams.”

“Well obviously all the personnel stuff comes from Coach. But, I would agree that we want to put the best five out on the field. These guys with the changes that have been made obviously have done some things to earn the right to start for us.”

On what the new offensive linemen bring to the table:

“I think they both add athleticism up front. Obviously with Mike [Madaras] he’s one of the most athletic guys for a freshman that I’ve had the chance to see play. I think with every game he’s getting better. With [Andrew] Zeller he gives us a little more athleticism, a little more strength on the inside. I’m not saying those other guys worked or haven’t, but right now we feel those guys will give us the best chance to have some success. It’s creating competition we like to see throughout the offensive positions.”

If it’s unusual for a true freshman to come in and start at that posiiton:

“I would venture to say you don’t want to make a living out of starting a bunch of true freshmen on the offensive line. That’s the one position that maturity, strength, and all those things come as you develop with them in the system. Fortunately for us, Mike comes out of a program at Good Counsel where they’ve done a pretty good job obviously of bringing along their players. Whether it be from a strength standpoint or a technical standpoint, I would definitely say that’s not something you want to do a lot where you have too many true freshmen playing up front. You can get away with it at the perimeter positions, but inside there is where strength comes with age and maturity. We’re fortunate he’s come in with some pretty good skill set.”

On the most productive thing they got done in the bye week

“I think it just basically confirmed some things that we knew. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we’ve done well on the offensive side of the ball, which there’s a lot of things that we’ve got to continue to improve upon. One of the big things is that we wanted to come out, was to say who we were, what we did well. We feel like coming out of the bye week we were able to get some guys healthy, we were able to clean up some fundamental things that for us the execution part on the offensive side is really important and a lot of it stems from the fundamentals. When you play young players as we’ve had to do or inexperienced as even some of our older players haven’t played a lot of football, it’s important to make sure that you’re very technical and fundamental and the attention to detail is where it needs to be.”

On if it’s an advantage playing so many running backs:

“It’s an advantage from the standpoint that they each bring something different to the table. They each have, when you look at how we like to use them, we’re basically doing the things that they do well as opposed to having a guy out there that’s doing all the different things we ask that position to do. They all have warranted playing time, they all have done some good things in that they’ve each had their times where they’ve made plays for us. What we’d like to see is a guy kind of take that position by the rein and do some things, but we also want to put the best player on the field that gives us the best chance to be successful in particular areas of what we do on offense. If one guy’s a better pass protector, we like to have that guy on the field. If one guy’s a better short yardage runner, you like to have that luxury to do that. In a perfect world would you like a guy that does all four, no doubt. But when you have four guys that are sophomore or younger, I don’t think any of them have mastered all the different skills that are necessary to play every down.”

Defensive Coordinator Brian Stewart

On what the most productive thing the defense got done during the bye week:

“Basically self scout, taking a look at what I call first down, second down, third down, and what I call against different formations. I feel like we need to get better on third down, so that was a big thing of concentration for us this bye.”

On what things they worked on to facilitate getting better:

“Well you look at what you call during different downs and distances. Third and short what were you calling, third and long what were you calling, what would you do over again, is it the call or is it the execution of the call. And then put all of those things down on paper, as a staff we look at it and kind of come to a conclusion after that.”

On what he saw out of Kenneth Tate in his first game back:

“I thought first of all there’s a calmness when he’s out there. The players like him and they know he’s a good player. Second of all, I think it was exciting to go out there in that atmosphere in that game in particular, as well as him getting a chance to play. That’s the first time he played in about 12-13 months so it had to be pretty exciting for him. I think he did a good job for us.”

On Tate’s his role this season:

“Yeah he just has to – the main thing we have to do is get him full strength. Get him to feel good about himself and his injuries and we’ll go from there.”

On A.J. Hendy’s injury status:

“The main thing is that we got two safeties that we’re pretty comfortable with – Matt Robinson and Erik Franklin. Those are our starting safeties so it’s going to be hard to play other guys that fit in behind those guys because we’re going to stick with our starters.”

On how far the defense is from being their best:

“I still think we’re a work in progress. We’re giving up way too many big plays, we got to be better on third down, and we got to tackle the catch. I just think that fortunately that’s a plus that we’re ranked and that we’re playing well. But there’s a lot of work and I think as long as we respect the process as a staff and as our players do, we can continue to get better and grow as a defense.”

On if he addressed rankings with the players:

“I discuss trying to get a win for the most part. You’re doing what it takes to win the football game. I don’t really address where we’re ranked.”

On if he’s surprised how quickly the players have adjusted to the defense:

“I think if you look traditionally at 3-4 defenses, usually the second year is their best year. You look at Coach [Wade] Phillips over with the Houston Texans, we run the exact same defense. You look at Dom Capers in his second year with the Green Bay Packers, they went to the Super Bowl. They give you an idea that the second-year guys just click, guys understand how they’re going to get blocked, the coverage aspect of everything. So, in the second year I think these guys have done a good job as well as the coaches. The coaches selling what we’re doing, and the players buying in and going forward with everything.”

If there is a reason why it takes to the second year:

“It’s just different, different principles. I think on the outside you got guys who are having their hand on the ground in the 4-3 scheme versus these guys are standing up taking on blocks without their hand in the ground. Also, the coverage aspects of it, the guy who is helping you in the flat instead of backed off in space, now he’s at the line of scrimmage, showing like he’s coming. So the coverages change, so I just think for guys to really understand, who’s going to help him where, how to play blocks, it just takes a while.”

On the biggest challenges Wake Forest’s offense presents:

“First of all I think they do a good job mixing up what they do. They do a good job running the ball, they’re a run-first team, and they have some great play-action passes off the same runs. For us to be successful, we have to make sure that we don’t make any mental errors, don’t give away any big plays, win on third down, and then contain [quarterback Tanner] Price when he has a chance to move around in the pocket. I think we’ll be alright.”

On what he’s learned from Texans defensive coordinator Wade Phillips:

“A lot of things I’ve learned from Coach Phillips. One of the main things is keep your guys playing fast, keep it simple, and when it’s simple it doesn’t mean anybody can do it. It means speaking their language and they understand what their responsibilities are. And those are the two main things I learned from Coach Phillips.”

On if he still talks to Phillips:

“Yes I talk to him as much as I can and ask him different questions about something as simple as ‘We’re playing against Connecticut. They run two tight end sets – what do you guys do now versus two tight end sets?’ Even some game management questions. So I still talk to him as much as I can.”